The Starting Point of Our Thinking

How many of our debates seem unsolvable? In our culture, there are people who have vastly, massively different conclusions that they draw about so many issues. Political and moral issues divide us as a culture in a way that we have never seen before as a society. But why does this happen?

The question, I would suggest, may boil down to a question of the starting point for our thinking. What is your worldview? When you are analyzing your own opinion on issues of life and morality, where do you begin? What things do you assume are true? What things do you declare to yourself are universally true? How do you make those determinations?

Again, go back to the starting point. Right there is going to be a major fork in the road that will divide people on a tremendous number of topics. Is the universe a closed, naturalistic system? Or is the universe the creation of Almighty God? No bigger question sits at the heart of all that divides most of our society.

Proverbs 1:7

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge;

fools despise wisdom and instruction. 

What is the beginning of knowledge? It is the fear of the Lord. If we want to know how the world works, how our lives are to function, what is the reason for our existence, we have to have a solid starting point. And, as should be no surprise, the Bible tells us that the right place to start is with the knowledge that God is and the proper respect for, fear of, him.

The alternative, the denial of the presence and purpose of God, is what the Bible calls folly. To turn from the Lord, in Proverbs, is said to be a denial of wisdom and instruction. Why would that be? If God exists—which he does—to turn from him and try to think from a position of denying his existence simply cannot work. WE do not do physics while trying to start from the assumption that there is no such thing as gravity or energy. We do not write music from the starting point of believing that there is no such thing as harmony. WE do not start cooking with the assumption that there is no such thing as a recipe. And we ought not try to figure out life and morality from the assumption that there is no God.